I Need Two Volunteers Please

Hi everybody,
I need the help of at least two volunteers, please, for testing if a plugin works on my blog. If there are more than two, it’s more likely to be useful as a test but I need at least two.

You don’t have to do much just subscribe to my blog for a couple of days (you don’t have to read it) and tell me if you can see in your Reader when I have posted something. I will let you know here that I have written a post so you can just quickly check your Reader at that point and let me know. One person needs to subscribe directly on my blog using the wordpress follow button and the other needs to subscribe via their Reader.

Here’s why:

As some of you knows, I run a self-hosted blog which is connected to a wordpress.com account via a plugin called Jetpack. I have noticed before that not all functions work properly on Jetpack although they seem to. I have reason to think that the function that allows people to follow me on wordpress.com is not working properly but I have no way of verifying it myself – and I don’t want to hassle Jetpack support unnecessarily (not to mention they couldn’t fix the other function that didn’t work). The problem seems to be this: if you subscribe on my actual blog (on the self-hosted site) using the wordpress follow button there, it works fine but if you subscribe inside wordpress.com in your Reader then I think it doesn’t work, ie. you don’t actually get to see my posts (which is obviously a problem!). Before I can figure out a solution, I need to know if I’m right about what the problem is.

Thinking about it… the two ways don’t have to be done all at once so we could go ahead now, with your side of the things. I’ve got a Sunday feature which I’m writing just now and will publish tomorrow.
Okay, this is what I’ll need you to do. If you look in your Reader and do a search for the tag herodotus, you should have one of my posts coming up: The Arms of Apollo. Once you found it, please subscribe to the blog (in effect you’ll be subscribing to the wp.com account and not to my blog but that’s what we want at this point).
Wp always notifies me, so then I will transfer your subscription to my actual self-hosted blog. The idea behind this would be – in theory – that you would be able to read my posts in your reader afterwards, whether or not I bother to publicise them via the wp,com account. When I published my post tomorrow, I’ll let you know and then please look in your reader and tell me if you can find it. Sadly, I suspect you won’t. Afterwards we just delete your subscription.
Thanks a lot!

Hi @jaipurthrumylens, thank you, you need to subscribe to the blog itself now.
If you look through your Reader under the herodotus tag, you should find one of my posts – should be the third down. It’s title is The Arms of Apollo.
In the top right hand corner of the post (in line with Waterblogged on the top left hand corner, directly on top of the picture) there is a follow button (+ Follow). Please use that to subscribe to the blog, thanks.

Thank you very much @pamkirst2014.@jaipurthrumylens has volunteered to be the ‘test’ subject trying to subscribe through the Reader, so would you mind to be the ‘control’ subject, please? I’d like you to subscribe directly on my blog.
Please click this link which takes you to the home page of my blog.
On the right hand side, in the sidebar, below the four red social media icons but above the subscribe via e-mail box, you should see a blue WordPress Follow button (sometimes it loads a little slowly, you might have to wait a couple of seconds for it to appear). Please click on the blue button to subscribe.
I will post something as soon as you have both subscribed and will let you know here when I have done so.
Then you will have to check whether you can see the post in your Reader and let me know. And that would be all, afterwards we can unsubscribe you!
What I think will happen is that you will see the post but @jaipurthrumylens won’t.

Well, thank you! Although that was not the point of the exercise, I’m very glad you like it! 🙂 But now we have to wait for @jaipurthrumylens to complete his subscription through the Reader and then I can post something.

Thanks so much! You made my day – by being able to see it, principally, although I’m glad you liked it too. 🙂

I really did think that plug-in was broken because people would keep to resubscribe to the blog, and because although I was getting more followers I seemed to be getting less views! So I had a look on the blog dashboard and noticed that it says no views of the post but it does shows one like. I expect it just means that if someone reads it in the reader without physically coming to the website then it doesn’t show in the view count (which seems a shame but the main thing is that you could actually see the post if you wanted to read it!)

Well, thanks a lot again, and I will remove your subscription as previously agreed so you won’t keep having my posts pop up in your Reader.

Yes, thanks a lot – I thought you would see it but nobody else. 🙂 Luckily this does not seem to be the case – I’m so relieved to find that it’s working after all! I mean can you imagine having followers who can’t actually read what you wrote! (Great sigh of relief.)
Now I just need more followers. 🙂